Debugging MythTV

If any of your MythTV programs crash (segfault), you must generate a proper backtrace before submitting a new bug report. Please also see the Ticket HOWTO for more information before submitting a bug report.

Debugging source-based installs

Note, also, that in addition to --compile-type=debug, the MythTV configure script now supports an option, --compile-type=profile. In many cases, a profile build will be acceptable for creating backtraces. The main difference between the debug and profile builds is that the debug build disables optimizations. Therefore, a debug build may perform significantly worse than a profile build. If you need to run MythTV under gdb for a long time, it may be worthwhile to run a profile build. If, however, a developer asks you to re-create the backtrace using a debug build, please do so without argument as some portions of the code can only be reliably debugged with a debug build. However, if your system is sufficiently powerful to run a debug build, you may want to start with that so you can be certain the backtrace will be useful.

Debugging package-based installs

Note that rather than recompiling to perform the debugging, you may be able to use "debug" packages provided by your packagers. Debug packages simply install the debugging symbols for the already-installed packages you're using, meaning you do not have to uninstall or reinstall MythTV. Often using the debug packages requires enabling a special repo that contains the debug packages.

Debugging with ATrpms packages

yum --enablerepo=atrpms-debuginfo install mythtv-debuginfo

or for all other environments eg testing/bleeding etc..

yum --enablerepo=atrpms\*-debuginfo install mythtv-debuginfo

Debugging with RPM Fusion packages

yum --enablerepo=\*-debuginfo install mythtv-debuginfo

Debugging with Ubuntu packages

Although it's possible to debug with the packages in the Ubuntu archive, it is first recommended that you enable the Mythbuntu autobuilds packages and make sure that the issue is occurring with them. These are built from the latest upstream svn snapshots of either -fixes or -trunk, whichever you choose. You can enable autobuilds at http://mythbuntu.org/auto-builds .

If you can still reproduce the problem with the latest autobuilds packages, please follow these steps to grab everything necessary for a bug report:

4) When your crash happens, it will ask you to submit a bug report. Submit the full report. You'll need a launchpad account for this.

Advanced Retrace

If you are asked to rerun the trace with symbols for the dependencies, you can follow these directions. This is *not* necessary for most people.
Take note of the bug number you just above filed, you'll need it here.

1) Install the apport-retrace tool so you can locally run a backtrace on a core dump.